The Justice Department is heading back to the Supreme Court over Texas' abortion law
The Justice Department wants the high court to put the restrictive law on hold during ongoing legal challenges. The U.S. government says the legislation is unconstitutional.
www.npr.org
Much of the litigation to contest the fiasco that was the 2020 Presidential Election was tossed out of various courts due to a lack of legal "standing." Legal standing is the principle that only the aggrieved party can pursue a case against the alleged wrongdoer. It is not a complicated or esoteric concept.
But here we have the United States Department of Justice going to the Supreme Court to prevent the Great State of Texas from making its own determination of when (during gestation) a woman may obtain an abortion. The "Constitutional" issue is fairly clear. Concealed amidst the verbiage of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision was a sort-of-simple formula that was purported to define the "Constitutional" standards for the question. (a) During the first trimester of pregnancy (first three months, approximately), the woman was said to have a "right" to get an abortion; (b) during the second trimester, the States were free to regulate the practice; and (c) when the fetus became arguably viable - during the third trimester - it became a "person" for Constitutional purposes, and killing it through abortion could be criminally sanctioned.
As we all know, the Left has obliterated (c) from RvW, and in most states, "legal" and "Constitutional" abortions can be performed up to and including the moment of life birth. But I digress.
Clearly, the Texas legislature has taken liberties with the current formulation of "Constitutional" law, as pertains to abortion. It collectively believes - as I believe - that that bit of "Constitutional" law is totally judge-made law, subject to alteration by any State that chooses to do so...unlike, for example the Constitutional law that prohibits public officials from punishing speech critical of the government. That issue aside, however...
How does the U.S. Justice Department have STANDING to challenge this law? Certainly a pregnant woman who missed the "heartbeat deadline" but whose developing fetus is not yet viable has standing. She is "Exhibit A" for this law. Why couldn't opponents of the law find such a woman (as occurred in RvW), and pursue the case on her behalf? The DoJ is not a citizen of Texas, it is not impacted by the law in any way, and it doesn't even represent any living human who might be aggrieved. Nor does it have the Constitutional power to represent such a woman, in any event. See Article I of the Constitution.
We have an outlaw Attorney General who seeks to intimidate a State with an unconstitutional, illegal, baseless case against that State, simply because this Administration politically disagrees with the underlying purpose of the statute. And parenthetically, this is an Attorney General who was once presented to the Senate as a possible Supreme Court Justice.
In today's political climate, when the USSC rightly dismisses this ridiculous case, the Leftists will shriek that the dismissal is an assault on all Wimmin, but this is bullshit. Standing is a real thing, and the AG cannot erase that requirement from a politically interesting case simply because he wishes it to be inapplicable.
A pox on his house.
